Quotes

[greywaren]

This is mostly for my personal reference, please excuse the clutter!
The Raven Boys

'He and Adam must have fought. Unsurprising. If it had a social security number, Ronan would have fought with it.'

'Ronan and Declan Lynch were undeniably brothers, with the same dark brown hair and sharp nose, but Declan was solid where Ronan was brittle. Declan's wide jaw and smile said vote for me, while Ronan's buzzed head and thin mouth warned that the species was poisonous.'

'Ronan's expression was still incendiary. His code of honor left no room for infidelity, for casual relationships. It wasn't that he didn't condone them; he couldn't understand them.'

'Gansey had once told Adam that he was afraid most people didn't know how to handle Ronan. What he meant by this was that he was worried that one day someone would fall on Ronan and cut themselves.'

'From their father, the Lynch brothers had gotten indefatigable egos, a decade of obscure Irish instrument lessons, and the ability to box like they meant it. Niall Lynch had not been around very much, but when he had been, he was an excellent teacher.'

'The story of the Lynch family was this: Once upon a time, a man named Niall Lynch had three sons, one who loved his father more than the others. Niall Lynch was handsome and charismatic and rich and mysterious, and one day, he was dragged from his charcoal grey BMW and beaten to death with a tire iron. It was a Wednesday. On Thursday, his son Ronan found the body in the driveway. On Friday, their mother stopped speaking and never spoke again.
On Saturday, the Lynch brothers found that their father's death had left them rich and homeless. The will forbade them to touch anything in the house- their clothing, the furniture. Their silent mother. The will demanded they immediately move into Aglionby housing. Declan, the eldest, was meant to control the funds and their lives until his brothers reached eighteen.
On Sunday, Ronan stole his deceased father's car.
On Monday, the Lynch brothers stopped being friends.'

'Sometimes, after Adam had been hit, there was something remote and absent in his eyes, like his body belonged to someone else. When Ronan was hit, it was the opposite; he became so urgently present it was as if he'd been sleeping before.'

'Ronan said, low, just for Gansey, "I want to quit."
"One more year."
"I don't want to do this for another year." He kicked a piece of gravel under the Camaro. Now his voice did rise, but only in ferocity, not in volume. "Another year, and then I get strangled with a necktie like my brother? I'm not a damn politician, Gansey. I'm not a banker."
Gansey wasn't either, but it didn't mean he wanted to leave school. The pain in Ronan's voice meant he couldn't have any in his when he said, "just graduate, and do whatever you want."
The trust funds from their fathers had ensured that neither of them had to work for a living, ever, if they didn't choose to. They were extraneous parts in the machine that was a society, a fact that sat differently on Ronan's shoulders than Gansey's.
Ronan looked angry, but he was in the mood where he was going to look angry no matter what. "I don't know what I want. I don't know what the hell I am."
He got into the Camaro.
"You promised me," Gansey said through the open car door.
Ronan didn't look up. "I know what I did, Gansey."
"Don't forget."
When Ronan slammed the door, it echoed across the parking lot in the too-loud way of sounds after dark.'

'But Adam already told Gansey he thought Ronan needed to learn how to clean up his own messes. It was only Gansey who seemed afraid that Ronan would learn to live in the dirt.'

'Six months ago, the only time it had ever mattered, Noah had found Ronan in an introspective pool of his own blood, and so he was exempt from ever having to look again. Noah hadn't gone with Gansey to the hospital afterward, and Adam had been caught trying to sneak out, so it was Gansey who'd been with Ronan when they stitched his skin whole again. It had been a long time ago, but also, it was no time at all.'

'Despite his interest in Latin, Ronan had declared their Latin teacher a socially awkward shitbird earlier in the year and further clarified that he didn't like him. Because he despised everyone, Ronan wasn't a good judge of character.'

'Ronan kept staring at Whelk. He was good at staring. There was something about his stare that took something from the other person.'

'Calla interrupted. "A secret killed your father and you know what it was."
[...] There might only have been Ronan and Calla in the room. He was a head taller than her already, but he looked young beside her, like a lanky wildcat not yet up to weight. She was a lioness.
She hissed, "What are you?"
Ronan's smile chilled Blue. There was something empty in it.'

'"What did you see when you touched that other boy? The Raven boy?"
"They're all raven boys," Blue said.
Her mother shook her head. "No, he's more raven than the others."
Calla rubbed her fingertips as if she was wiping the memory of Ronan's tattoo from them. "It's like scrying into that weird space. There's so much coming out of him, it shouldn't be possible. Do you remember that woman who came in who was pregnant with quadruplets? It's like that, but worse."
"He's pregnant?" Blue asked.
"He's creating," Calla said. "That space is creating too. I don't know how to say it any better than that."'

'Six months before, Ronan had gotten the intricate black tattoo that covered most of his back and snaked up his neck, and now the monochromatic lines of it were stark in the claustrophobic lamplight, more real than anything else in the room. It was a peculiar tattoo, both vicious and lovely, and every time Gansey saw it, he saw something different in the pattern. Tonight, nestled in an inked glen of wicked, beautiful flowers there was a beak where before, he'd seen a scythe.'

'He was not the Ronan that Gansey had grown accustomed to, but neither was he the Ronan that Gansey had first met. It was clear now that the instrument wailing from the headphones was the Irish pipes. Gansey couldn't remember the last time Ronan had listened to Celtic music. Niall Lynch's music. All at once, he, too, missed Ronan's charismastic father. But more than that, he missed the Ronan that had existed when Niall Lynch had still been alive. The boy in front of him now, fragile bird in his hands, seemed like a compromise.'

'With visible effort, Ronan pulled himself back, sorted himself out. None of the Lynch brothers liked to appear anything other than intentional, even if it was intentionally cruel. Instead of answering, he asked, "Do you not want me to come?"
Something stuck in Gansey's chest. "I would take all of you anywhere with me."
The moonlight made a strange sculpture of Ronan's face, a stark portrait incompletely molded by a sculptor who had forgotten to work in compassion.'

'From the passenger seat, Ronan began to swear at Adam. It was a long, involved swear, using every forbidden word possible, often in compound-word form. As Adam stared at his lap, penitent, he mused that there was something musical about Ronan when he swore, a careful and loving precision to the way he fit the words together, a black-painted poetry. It was far less hateful sounding than when he didn't swear.'

'From Gansey's expression, Adam thought that something had happened to Ronan. Maybe, finally, Ronan had happened to Ronan. But it wasn't the hospital they drove to.'

'[Gansey] scratched the back of his hand with a credit card while he explained Ronan's fragile emotional state, the agonizing trials of sleepwalking, the affirming joys of Monmouth Manufacturing, and the strides they'd made since Ronan had come to live with them. Gansey concluded with a thesis statement of just how successful he was certain Ronan Lynch could be once he found a way to patch the hemorrhaging, Niall-Lynch shaped hole in his heart.
[...] Pinter's voice was a little deeper as he said, "I don't think you understand why Mr. Lynch's time at Aglionby is being threatened. He utterly flaunts school regulations and seems to have nothing but contempt for his academics. We've given him leeway considering his extremely difficult personal circumstances, but he seems to forget that attending Aglionby Academy is a privilege, not a chore. His expulsion is meant to be effective Monday."
Gansey leaned forward and rested his head on the steering wheel. Ronan, Ronan, why...
He said, "I know he's screwing up. I know he should have been kicked out a long time ago. Just give me until the end of the school year. I can get him through his finals."
"He hasn't been to any classes, Mr. Gansey."
"I can get him through finals." '

'"She wants you again," Blue said, because it was clear that she did. Ronan accepted the bird and stroked the feathers on the back of her head.
"You look like a super villain with your familiar," Adam said.
Ronan's smile cut his face, but he looked kinder than Blue had ever seen him, like the raven in his hand was his heart, finally laid bare.'

'"Ronan went to the library."
"Move in! I thought he said... wait, Ronan went where?"
With lots of pauses and sighs and staring off into the trees, Noah described the previous night's events to her, ending with, "If Ronan had gotten arrested for punching Adam's dad, he would've been out of Aglionby no matter what happened. No way they'd let an assault charge ride. But Adam pressed charges so Ronan would get off the hook. 'Course that means Adam has to move out because his dad hates him now."
"But that's awful," Blue said, "Noah that's awful. I didn't know that about Adam's dad."
"That's the way he wanted it."
[...] She asked, "Okay, wait. So why is Ronan at the library?"
"Cramming," Noah said. "For an exam on Monday."
It was the nicest thing Blue had ever heard of Ronan doing.'

'MURDERED.
The writing continued until the driver's side glass was clear, entirely swept clean by an invisible finger until there were so many words that none of them could be read. Until it was only a window into an empty car with the memory of a burger on the passenger seat.
"Noah," Gansey said, "I'm so sorry."
Blue wiped away a tear. "Me, too."
Stepping forward, leaning over the hood of the car, Ronan pressed his finger to the windshield, and while they watched, he wrote:
REMEMBERED
Calla's voice spoke in Blue's head, so clearly that she wondered if anyone else could hear it: A secret killed your father, and you know what it was.
Without any comment, Ronan put his hands into his pockets and strode deeper into the woods.'

'Ronan, still in the ruins, looked over his shoulder at them. In the dim light of flashlights, the tattooed hook that edged out above his collar looked like either a claw or finger or part of a fleur-de-lis. It was nearly as sharp as his smile.
"I guess now would be a good time to tell you," he said. "I took Chainsaw out of my dreams."


The Dream Thieves
IN WHICH I QUOTE THE ENTIRE BOOK BECAUSE IT'S ALL ABOUT RONAN YOU'VE BEEN WARNED

'Ronan Lynch lived with every sort of secret.'

'The three brothers were nothing if not handsome copies of their father, although each flattered a different side of Niall. Declan had the same way of taking a room and shaking its hand. Matthew’s curls were netted with Niall’s charm and humor. And Ronan was everything that was left: molten eyes and a smile made for war.'

'"And you, Ronan," Niall said. He always said Ronan differently from other words. As if he had meant to say another word entirely — something like knife or poison or revenge — and then swapped it out for Ronan’s name at the last moment. "When you were born, the rivers dried up and the cattle in Rockingham County wept blood."'

'Ronan Lynch, keeper of secrets, fighter of men, devil of a boy, had told them all that he could take objects out of his dreams. Example A: Chainsaw.'

'Ronan leaned on the cracked black vinyl of the passenger­ side door and chewed on the leather bands on his wrist. They tasted like gasoline, a flavor that struck Ronan as both sexy and summery.
For him, it was only sometimes about Glendower. Gansey needed to find Glendower because he wanted proof of the impossible. Ronan already knew the impossible existed. His father had been impossible. He was impossible. Mostly, Ronan wanted to find Glendower because Gansey wanted to find Glendower. Only sometimes did he think about what would happen if they actually discovered him. He thought it might be a lot like dying. When Ronan had been smaller and more forgiving of miracles, he’d considered the moment of death with rhapsodic delight. His mother had told him that when you looked into the eyes of God at the pearly gates, all the questions you ever had were answered.
Ronan had a lot of questions.
Waking Glendower might be like that. Fewer angels attending, and maybe a heavier Welsh accent. Slightly less judgment.'

'The elderly made Ronan anxious.'

'The entire thing was Adam’s fault — he’d been the one to wake the ley line, though Gansey preferred to pretend it had been a group decision. Whatever bargain Adam had struck in order to accomplish it seemed to have rendered him a little unpredictable as well. Ronan, a sinner himself, wasn’t as struck by the transgression as he was by Gansey’s insistence that they continue to pretend Adam was a saint.'

'"She can’t make me," Gansey said.
"She doesn’t have to," Ronan sniffed. "Mama’s boy."
"Dream me a solution."
"Don’t have to. Nature already gave you a spine. You know what I say? Fuck Washington."
"This is why you never have to go to things like this," Gansey replied.'

'The window rolled down to reveal Joseph Kavinsky in the driver’s seat, his eyes hidden behind white rimmed sunglasses that reflected only the sky. The gold links of the chain around his neck glittered a grin. He had a refugee’s face, hollow­eyed and innocent. He wore a lazy smile, and he mouthed something to Gansey that ended with “— unt.”
There was nothing about Kavinsky that wasn't despicable.
Ronan’s heart surged. Muscle memory.'

'In his bed, he struggled to move. Just after waking, after dreaming, his body belonged to no one. He looked at it from above, like a mourner at a funeral. The exterior of this early­ morning Ronan didn't look at all like how he felt on the inside. Anything that didn't impale itself on the sharp line of this sleeping boy’s cruel mouth would be tangled in the merciless hooks of his tattoo, pulled beneath his skin to drown.
Sometimes, Ronan thought he would be trapped like this, floating outside his body.
When he was awake, Ronan was not permitted to go to the Barns. When Niall Lynch had died — been killed, not died, beaten to death with a tire iron that was still lying beside him when Ronan had found him, a weapon still coated in his blood and his brains and the better part of his face, a face that had been alive maybe only an hour before, two hours before, while Ronan was dreaming only yards away, a full night’s sleep, a feat never again to be performed — a lawyer had explained the details of their father’s will to them. The Lynch brothers were wealthy, princes of Virginia, but they were exiles. All of the money was theirs, but on one condition: The boys were never to set foot on the property again. They were to disturb neither the house nor its contents.
Including their mother.
It will never stand up in court, Ronan had said. We should fight it.
Declan had said, It doesn't matter. Mom is nothing without him. We might as well go.
We have to fight, Ronan had insisted.
Declan had already turned away. She’s not fighting.'

'The scenario felt familiar and timeworn. The two of them had lived together at Monmouth for nearly as long as Gansey had been in Henrietta — almost two years. [...]
The fall after Ronan and Gansey had become friends, the summer before Adam, they'd spent half their free time hunting for Glendower and the other half hauling junk out of the second floor. [...]
They worked on Glendower and Monmouth Manufacturing for months. The first week of June, Gansey found a headless statue of a bird with king carved on its belly in Welsh. The second week, they wired a refrigerator in the upstairs bathroom, right next to the toilet. The third week, someone killed Niall Lynch. The fourth week, Ronan moved in.'

'"Like, am I in your dreams?"
"Oh, yes, baby." It amused Ronan to say this, a lot. He laughed enough that Chainsaw abandoned her paper shredding to verify that he wasn't dying. Ronan sometimes dreamt of Adam, too, the latter boy sullen and elegant and fluently disdainful of dream­ Ronan’s clumsy attempts to communicate.'

'"I have to hold it not as a dream, but like it’s real."
"I don’t understand."
"I can’t pretend to hold it. I have to really hold it."
"I still don’t understand."
Neither did Ronan, but he didn't know how to say it any better. For a moment he was quiet, thinking, no sound but Chainsaw returning to the floor to pick at the corpse of the envelope.
"Look, it’s like a handshake," he said finally. "You know when some guy goes in for the shake, and you’ve never met him before, and he puts it out there, and you just know in that moment right before the shake if it’s going to be sweaty or not? It’s like that."
"So what you’re saying is you can’t explain it."
"I did explain it."
"No, you used nouns and verbs together in a pleasing but illogical format."
"I did explain it," Ronan insisted, so ferociously that Chainsaw flapped, certain she was in trouble. "It’s a nightmare, man — it’s when you dream of getting bit and when you wake up your arm hurts. It’s that."
"Oh," said Gansey. "Does it hurt?"
Sometimes, when he took something out of a dream, it was such a senseless rush that it left the real world pale and unsaturated for hours after. Sometimes he couldn't move his hands. Sometimes Gansey found him and thought he was drunk. Sometimes, he really was drunk.'

'Ronan rested his forehead on the topmost shelf. The metal edge snarled against his skull, but he didn't move. At night, the longing for home was ceaseless and omniscient, an airborne contaminant. He saw it in Dollar City’s cheap oven mitts — that was his mother at dinnertime. He heard it in the slam of the cash register drawer — that was his father coming home at midnight. He smelled it in the sudden whiff of air freshener — that was the family trips to New York.
Home was so close at night. He could be there in twenty minutes. He wanted to smash everything off these shelves.'

'Sometimes Ronan thought Adam was so used to the right way being painful that he doubted any path that didn't come with agony.'

'Probably, Adam had made the connection between his rent change and the tuition raise. It wasn't a complicated assumption, and he was clever. It was easy, too, to hang it on Gansey. If Adam had been thinking straight, though, he would've considered how it was Ronan who had infinite connections to St. Agnes. And how whoever was behind the rent change would have had to enter a church office with both a wad of cash and a burning intention to persuade a church lady to lie about a fake tax assessment. Taken apart that way, it seemed to have Ronan written all over it. But one of the marvelous things about being Ronan Lynch was that no one ever expected him to do anything nice for anyone.'

'The thing was, Ronan knew what a face looked like, just before it was about to break. He’d seen it in the mirror often enough. Adam had fracture lines all over him.'

'All the whimsy of Dollar City was ruined. As Gansey led the way out, Noah said to Ronan, "I know why you’re mad."
Ronan sneered at him, but his pulse heaved. "Tell me then, Prophet."
Noah said, "It’s not my job to tell other people’s secrets."'

'Ronan’s bedroom door burst open. Hanging on the door frame, Ronan leaned out to peer past Gansey. He was doing that thing where he looked like both the dangerous Ronan he was now and the cheerier Ronan he had been when Gansey had first met him. "Is Noah out here?"
"Hold on," Gansey told Adam. Then, to Ronan: "Why would he be?"
"No reason. Just no reason." Ronan slammed his door.
Gansey asked Adam, "Sorry. You still have that suit for the party?"
Adam’s response was buried in the sound of the second­ story door falling open. Noah slouched in. In a wounded tone, he said, "He threw me out the window!"
Ronan’s voice sang out from behind his closed door: "You’re already dead!"'

'He danced on the knife’s edge between awareness and sleep. When he dreamt like this, he was a king. The world was his to bend. His to burn.'

'And there she was, peering cautiously from behind a tree. When Ronan had first dreamt of her, she’d had long honey­ blond hair, but after a few years it changed to a close­ cropped pixie cut, mostly hidden by a white skullcap. Although he had aged, she had not. For some reason she reminded Ronan of the old black­and ­white photos of laborers in New York City. She had the same sort of forlorn, orphan look. Her presence made it easier to pull things from his dreams.
He reached a hand toward her, but she didn't immediately emerge. She peered around fearfully. Ronan couldn't fault her. There were terrifying things in his head.'

'Ronan Lynch believed in heaven and hell.
Once, he'd seen the devil.
[...] And so Ronan became a reverse evangelist. The truth burst and grew inside him, and it was laid upon him to share it with no one. No one was meant to see hell before they got there. No one should have to live with the devil. So many homilies on faith were ruined once you no longer required it for belief.
Now it was Sunday, and as with every Sunday, he was headed to St. Agnes. Gansey wasn't with him — he belonged to some religion that only required church attendance on Christmas — but Noah came with. Noah had not been Catholic when he was alive, but recently he had decided to find religion. No one in the church ever noticed him and it was possible God didn'T, either, but Ronan, as someone God possibly ignored as well, didn’t mind the company.
Today Ronan grimly stepped through the great old doors and clawed some holy water from the font while the choir members narrowed their eyes at him. He scanned the pews for Declan. It was the devil who drove him to church every Sunday, but it was his brother Matthew who drove him to a pew beside Declan.'

'As he lowered the kneeler, he smelled the sharp, antiseptic smell of hospital on his brother. For a moment, disoriented, he had to hold in his breath. He knelt and put his head down on his arms. The image behind his eyes was the bloody tire iron beside his father's head. I didn't come out soon enough, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Why of all the things I can do can I not change — While whispered conversations ebbed and flowed around them, he focused on the image of his older brother’s face and tried unsuccessfully to imagine the person that could beat Declan up. The only person who had ever succeeded in beating up a Lynch brother had been another Lynch brother.
After he had exhausted this line of thought, Ronan gave in to the brief privilege of hating himself, as he always did in church. There was something satisfying about acknowledging this hatred, something relieving about this little present he allowed himself each Sunday.'

'Matthew failed at many more things than either of his older brothers, but unlike Declan or Ronan, he always tried his hardest.
Ronan had dreamt one thousand nightmares about something happening to him.'

'In his ear, Noah whispered, "Is crack the same thing as speed?"
Ronan didn't answer. He didn't think it was a very church ­appropriate conversation.
"I know you think you’re a punk," Declan said, "but you aren't nearly as badass as you think you are."
"Oh, go to hell," Ronan snapped, just as the altar boys broached the rear doors.
"Guys," Matthew pleaded. "Be holy."'

'Opening the center console, Ronan pulled out the sunglasses he'd dreamt the night before. He tossed them through his open window onto Kavinsky’s passenger seat.
The light turned yellow, and then red. Kavinsky picked up the glasses and studied them. He knocked his own sunglasses halfway down his nose and studied them some more. Ronan was gratified to note how closely the new pair resembled them. The only thing he’d gotten wrong was that he'd made the tint a bit darker. Surely Kavinsky, master forger, should appreciate them.
Finally, Kavinsky slid his gaze over to Ronan. His smile was sly. Pleased that Ronan recognized the game. "Well done, Lynch. Where’d you find them?"
Ronan smiled thinly. He turned off the air­ conditioning.
"That's how it’s gonna be? Hard to get?"
The opposing light turned yellow.
"Yes," said Ronan.
The traffic light above them turned green. Without any particular prelude, both cars exploded off the mark. For two seconds, the Mitsubishi snarled ahead, but then Kavinsky screwed the shift from third to fourth.
Ronan did not.
He blew by.
Just as Ronan tore around a corner, Kavinsky honked his horn twice and made a rude gesture. Then Ronan was out of sight and speeding on his way back to Monmouth Manufacturing.
In the rearview mirror, he allowed himself the slightest of smiles.
This was what it felt like to be happy.'

'Ronan leapt out of the car and slammed the door. The thing about Ronan Lynch, Adam had discovered, was that he wouldn't — or couldn't — express himself with words. So every emotion had to be spelled out in some other way. A fist, a fire, a bottle. Now Cabeswater was missing and the Pig was hobbled, and he needed to go have a silent shouting fit with his body. In the back window, Adam saw Ronan pick up a rock from the side of the road and hurl it into the creeper.'

'Some time later, after Noah had discreetly disappeared, Declan's Volvo glided up, as quiet as the Pig was loud. Ronan said, "Move up, move up" to Blue until she scooted the passenger seat far enough for him to clamber behind it into the backseat. He hurriedly sprawled back in the seat, throwing one jean-covered leg over the top of Adam's and laying his head in a posture of thoughtless abandon. By the time Declan arrived at the driver's side window, Ronan looked as if he had been asleep for days.
"Lucky I was able to get away," Declan said. He peered into the car, eyes passing over Blue and snagging on Ronan in the backseat. His gaze followed his brother’s leg to where it rested on top of Adam's, and his expression tightened.'

'It was becoming a nightmare. Ronan could hear the night horrors coming, in love with his blood and his sadness. Their wings flapped in time with his heartbeat. He wasn't in control enough to drive them away.
Because Adam was the horror now. The teeth were something else, Adam was something else, he was a creature, close enough to touch. To think about it was to become immobilized with the horror of watching Adam be consumed from the inside out. Ronan couldn't even tell where the mask was now; there was only Adam, the monster, a toothful king.
The girl sobbed out, "Ronan, imploro te!"
Ronan took Adam’s arm and said his name.
But Adam lunged. Tooth upon tooth upon tooth. Even as he went for Ronan, one of his hands still tugged at the now-invisible mask, trying to free himself. There was none of his face left.
Adam seized Ronan's neck, fingers hooked in his skin. Ronan could not kill him, no matter how much Orphan Girl begged. It was Adam.
The mouth gaped, door to bloody ruin.
Niall Lynch had taught Ronan to box, and he had once told his son: Clear your mind of whimsy.
Ronan cleared his mind of whimsy.
He seized the mask. The only way he could find the edge was to snatch Adam’s hand where it still doggedly clawed at the slender mask. Bracing himself for the effort, Ronan wrenched. But the mask came away as easily as a petal from a flower. It was only for Adam that it had been a prison.
Adam staggered back.
In Ronan's hand, the mask was as thin as a sheet of paper, still warm from Adam's gasped breaths. Orphan Girl buried her face in his side, her body shaking with sobs. Her tiny voice was muffled: "Tollerere me a hic, tollerere me a hic ..."
Take me away from here, take me away from here.
In the background, Ronan’s night horrors drew closer. Close enough to smell.
Adam was making peculiar, dreadful sounds. When Ronan lifted his eyes, he saw that the mask had been all that was left of Adam’s face. When he’d pulled it from Adam, he’d revealed muscle and bone, teeth and eyeball. Adam’s pulse pumped a globule of blood from every place a muscle met another muscle.
Adam slumped against the wall, life leaking from him.
Ronan gripped the mask, his limbs awash with adrenaline. "I'll put it back on."
Please work.'

'His body was frozen, as it always was after dreaming.'

'Ronan stood in the center of the room with his back to them. This Ronan Lynch was not the one that Gansey had first met. No. That Ronan, he thought, would’ve been intrigued but wary of the young man standing in the motes of dust. Ronan’s close-shaved head was bowed, but everything else about his posture suggested vigilance, distrust. His wicked tattoo hooked out from behind his black muscle T. This Ronan Lynch was a dangerous and hollowed-out creature. He was a snare for you to step your foot in.
Do not think of this Ronan. Remember the other one.'

'"Do you remember last year?" Ronan asked. "When I told you... it wouldn't happen again?"
It was a foolish question. Gansey never forgot. Noah discovering Ronan in a slick of his own blood, veins ripped to shreds. Hours in the hospital. Counseling and promises.
No point being coy. Gansey said, "When you tried to kill yourself."
Ronan shook his head once. "It was a nightmare. They tore me apart in my dream, and when I woke up —" He gestured with his bloody hands. "I brought it with me. I couldn't tell you. My father told me to never tell."
"So you let me think you’d tried to kill yourself?"
Ronan allowed the weight of his blue ­eyed gaze to rest heavily on Gansey, making him understand that he wasn’t getting another answer. His father had told him to never tell. And so he had never told.'

'Gansey darted in, slashing at a limb. The creature's clothing parted beneath the blade. It leapt up, straight at Ronan, who blocked it with the crowbar. With a mighty flap, the creature launched itself through the air and perched on the doorjamb, hands between its legs, clinging like a spider. There was nothing human about it. It hissed at the boys. Red­pupiled eyes snapped shut and open. A bird. A dinosaur. A demon.
No wonder Ronan never sleeps.'

'Ronan watched Gansey over the body of the creature — it seemed even larger in its death — and his expression was as unguarded as Gansey had ever seen it. He was being made to understand that this, all of it, was a confession. A look into who Ronan really had been the entire time he had known him.'

'She wore a dress Ronan thought looked like a lampshade. Whatever sort of lamp it belonged on, Gansey clearly wished he had one.
Ronan wasn’t a fan of lamps.'

'As they waited, Gansey turned to Ronan. "Let me be very clear: If there was any other place we could bury this thing without fear of it being discovered, we’d be going there instead. I don't think it’s a good idea to go to the Barns, and I wish you wouldn't come with us in any case. I want it to be on record."
"Great, man," Ronan replied. Even the admonishment was electrifying. Proof that this was indeed happening. "I'm glad you got it out."
There was never a chance Ronan wasn’t coming with.
[...]"What are we doing, by the way?"
Home, Ronan thought. I'm going home.
"Well," Gansey said slowly, as thunder rumbled once more, "the illegal part is that we're going to Ronan's family’s property, which he’s not allowed to do."
Ronan flashed his teeth at her. "And the distasteful part is that we’re burying a body."'

'Ronan had not been to the Barns in over a year, even in his dreams.
It was as he remembered it from countless summer afternoons: the two stone pillars half-
hidden in ivy, tangled banks like a wall around the property, the oaks huddled close on either side of the pitted gravel driveway. The gray sky above made everything greens and blacks, forest and shade, growing and mysterious. The effect was to give the entrance to the Barns a sort of privacy. A reclusiveness.
As they ascended the drive, rain spattered on the BMW’s windshield. Thunder rumbled.
Ronan navigated the car up over a crest through the oak trees, around a tight turn, and there — a great sloping expanse, pure green, sheltered by trees on all sides. Once upon a time, cattle had grazed in these front pastures, cattle of every color. That herd, lovely as fairy animals, still populated Ronan’s dreams, though in stranger fields. He wondered what had happened to the real cattle.
In the backseat, Blue and Adam craned their necks, looking at the approaching house. It was homely, unimpressive, a farmhouse that had been added on to every few decades. It was the namesake barns scattered through the saturated hills that were memorable, most of them chalk-
white and tin-roofed, some of them still standing, some of them collapsing. Some were long and skinny livestock barns, others broad hay barns topped with pointy-hatted cupolas. There were ancient stone outbuildings and new, flat-roofed equipment sheds, still-­rank goat houses and long-
empty dog kennels. They dotted the fields as if they’d grown from them: smaller ones clustered like mushrooms, larger ones standing apart.
Over them all was the troubled sky, huge and purple with rain. Every color was deeper, truer, better. This was the reality, and last year had been the dream.
There was one light on in the farmhouse, the light to the sitting room. It was always on.
Am I really here? Ronan wondered.
Surely he would wake up soon and find himself again exiled in Monmouth Manufacturing or in the backseat of his car or lying on the floor beside Adam’s bed at St. Agnes. In the oppressive light, the Barns was so green and beautiful that he felt sick.
In the rearview mirror, he caught a glimpse of Adam, his expression dreamy and ill, and then of Blue, her fingertips pressed to the glass as if she wanted to touch the damp grass.
The gravel parking area was empty, the home nurse nowhere in evidence. Ronan parked beside a plum tree laden with unpicked fruit. Once, he’d had a dream that he’d bitten into one of the fruits, and juice and seeds had exploded from inside. Another where the fruit bled and creatures came to lap it up before they burrowed under his skin, sweet-scented parasites.
When Ronan opened the door, the car was immediately filled with the damp-earth, green-
walled, mold-stone scent of home.
"It looks like another country," Blue said.
It was another country. It was a country for the young, a country where you died before you got old. Climbing out, their feet sank into the summer-soft turf beside the gravel. Fine rain caught in their hair. The drops murmured on the leaves of the surrounding trees, an ascending hum.
The loveliness of the place couldn’t even be marred by the knowledge that this was the place Ronan had found his father’s body, and this was the car Ronan had found him lying near. Like Monmouth Manufacturing, the Barns was transformed utterly by the changing light. The body had been found on a cool, dark morning, and this was a shaggy, gray afternoon. So the memory became only a briefly noted thought, analytical rather than emotional.
The only reality was this: He was home.
How badly he wanted to stay.'

'Ronan was filled with a burst of fury at Declan, enforcer of his father's will. He couldn't have his father back, probably would never have his mother back. But if he was allowed to com back here — it wouldn’t be the same, but it would be bearable.'

'After a moment, Blue said, "Did you really grow up here, Ronan?"
"In this barn?"
"You know exactly what I mean."
He started to answer, but pain welled up, sudden and shocking. The only way he could get the sentiment out was by drowning the words with acid. It came out sounding like he hated the place. Like he couldn’t wait to get away. Mocking and cruel, he said, "Yes. This was my castle."'

'Reaching all the way to the crumpled old feed bag in the bottom, Ronan found the mouse nest. He carefully pulled one of the young mice free. It was downy and weightless, so small that the warmth of its body barely registered. Though the mouse was old enough to be completely mobile, it remained calm in his cupped palm. He ran a finger gently along its spine.
"Why is it so tame?" Blue asked. "Is it sleeping, too?"
He tipped his hand just enough for her to see its alert, trustful eyes, but not enough for Chainsaw to glimpse it — she’d think it was food. He and Matthew used to find the mouse nests in the feed rooms and in the fields near the troughs. They would sit cross-legged for hours in the grass, letting the mice run back and forth across their hands. The young ones were never afraid.
"It’s awake," he said. Lifting his hand, he pressed the tiny body to his cheek so that he could feel the flutter of its rapid heartbeat against his skin. Blue was staring at him, so he offered it to her. "You can feel its heart that way."
She looked suspicious. "Are you for real? Are you messing with me?"
"How do you figure?"
"You’re a bastard, and this doesn’t seem like a typical bastard activity."
He smiled thinly. "Don’t get used to it."'

'Ronan rubbed a studious thumb beneath one of the leather straps, wiping away the grime and sweat. He wondered when he’d ever be back. Softly, just for Gansey, he asked, "Can I go and see Mom?"'

'With Blue and Adam there, Ronan saw the Barns with fresh eyes. This was not the pretentious, beautiful old money of Gansey's family. This house was shabby rich, betraying its wealth not with culture or airs but because no comfort was wanting: mismatched antiques and copper pots, real hand-painted art on the walls and real hand-knotted rugs on the floors. Where Gansey's ancestral home was a no-­touch museum of elegant, remote things, the Barns was a warren of pool tables and quilts, video game cords and shoddily expensive leather couches.
Ronan loved it so much. He nearly couldn’t bear it. He wanted to destroy something.'

'He wasn't sure what was worse: leaving or the anticipation of leaving.'

'Ronan hurled himself through the air.
"No."
The mask clattered to the floor. Adam, startled, stared at where Ronan's hand gripped his wrist. Ronan could feel his own heart pounding and, in Adam's wrist, Adam's.
At once, he released him and fell back. He snatched up the mask instead. He hung it back on the wall, but his pulse didn’t calm. He didn’t look at Adam.
"Don't," he said. But he didn’t know what he was telling Adam not to do. It was possible that his father's version of the mask was entirely harmless. It was possible that it only became deadly in Ronan's head.
Suddenly, he couldn't stand it, any of it, his father's dreams, his childhood home, his own skin.
He punched the wall. His knuckles bit plaster, and the plaster bit back. He felt the moment his skin split. He’d left a faint impression of his anger in the wall, but it hadn’t cracked.
"Oh, come on, Lynch," Adam said. "Are you trying to break your hand?"
"What was that?" Gansey called from the other room.
Ronan had no idea what it was, but he did it again. And then he kicked one of the dining room chairs. He hurled a tall basket full of recorders and pennywhistles against the wall. Tore a handful of small frames from their hangers. He’d been angry before, but now he was nothing. Just knuckles and sparks of pain.
Abruptly, his arm stopped in midflight.
Gansey's grip was tight on it, and his expression, two inches away from Ronan's, was unamused. His countenance was at once young and old. More old than young.
"Ronan Lynch," he said. It was the voice Ronan couldn't not listen to. It was sure in every way that Ronan was not. "Stop this right now. Go see your mother. And then we’re leaving."
Gansey held Ronan's arm a second longer to make sure he hadn't mistaken his meaning, and then he dropped it and turned to Adam. "Were you just going to stand there?"
"Yeah," replied Adam.
"Decent of you," Gansey said.
There was no heat in Adam’s reply. "I can’t kill his demons."'

'And there, in the middle of it, was his beautiful mother. She had a silent audience of catheters and IVs and feeding tubes — all of the things that home nurses always felt she would need. But she required nothing. She was a sedentary queen from an old epic: golden hair swept away from her pale face, cheeks flushed, lips red as the devil, eyes gently closed. She looked nothing like her charismatic husband, her troubled sons.
Ronan walked directly up to her, close enough to see that she had not changed a bit since the last time he had seen her, months and months ago. Though his breath moved the fine hairs around her temples, she didn’t react to her son’s presence.
Her chest rose and fell. Her eyes stayed closed.
Non mortem, somni fratrem. Not death, but his brother, sleep.
Blue whispered, "Just like the other animals."
The truth — he’d known it all along, really, if he thought about it — burrowed into him. Blue was right.
His home was populated by things and creatures from Niall Lynch's dreams, and his mother was just another one of them.'

'The annoying thing about Ronan was always that he was angry when everyone else was calm, and calm when everyone else was angry.'

'Ronan looked at him.
That look, Blue thought. Ronan Lynch would do anything for Gansey.'

'There was nothing particularly sympathetic about Ronan just then, handsome mouth drawing a cruel line, eerie tattoo creeping out the collar of his black T-shirt, raven pressed against the side of his shaved head. It was hard to remember the Ronan who’d pressed that tiny mouse to his cheek back at the Barns.'

'Her plum lips pursed. "Something you should know about me, Snake. I don’t believe anyone."
Chainsaw hissed. Ronan said, "Something you should know about me. I never lie."'

'"All of these things are still a part of you. To me, they feel precisely the same as you feel. Well, mostly. They’re like your nail clippings. So they all share the same life as you. The same soul. You’re the same entity."
Ronan wanted to protest this — if Chainsaw fell off a table, he didn’t feel her pain — but he wouldn't feel the pain of one of his nail clippings, either.
"So when you die, they'll stop."
"Stop? Not die themselves?" Gansey asked.
Calla turned herself upside down, her knees bent and her feet pressed to each other. It made her a cunning spider. "When you die, your computer doesn't die, too. They never really lived like you're thinking of life. It’s not a soul that's animating them. Take away the dreamer and — they’re a computer waiting for input."
Ronan thought of what Declan had said all those months before: Mom is nothing without Dad. He'd been right. "So my mother is never going to wake up."
[...] Then Calla fixed her gaze on Ronan, a sharply structured smile manifesting on her plum-painted lips. "What have you done, Snake?"
Ronan didn’t reply. Silence was never a wrong answer.'

'His illicit visit to the Barns, his realization about his mother, and Calla’s assessment of the situation had badly shaken him. Suddenly, he was presented with a decision: whether or not to revive their mother. If he could have his mother back, that would help, surely, even if she had to live in Cabeswater. One parent was better than no parents. Life was better than death. Awake was better than asleep.
But those words of Declan's needled Ronan: She's nothing without Dad.
It was like he knew. Ronan wanted badly to know how much Declan knew, but it wasn't like he could ask him.'

'"Says you and Dad were both dreamers," Matthew said, "and you’re going to make us lose everything."
Ronan sat very still. He was so still so quickly that Chainsaw froze as well, her head tilted toward the youngest Lynch brother, purloined tuna sandwich forgotten.
Declan knew about their father. Declan knew about their mother. Declan knew about him.
What did it change? Nothing, maybe.'

'There was a carefully cultivated sense of danger to this Lynch brother. This was not a rattlesnake hidden in the grass, but a deadly coral snake striped with warning colors. Everything about him was a warning: If this snake bit you, you had no one to blame but yourself'

ch 24


'“Wait. You thought — it was never gonna be you and me. Is that what you thought?”
Kavinsky’s expression was scorched. “There’s only with me or against me.”
Which was ludicrous. It had always been Ronan against Kavinsky. There was never any possibility of with. “It was never going to be you and me.”
“I will burn you down,” Kavinsky said.
Ronan’s smile was sharp as a knife. He had already been burned to nothing. “You wish.”
Kavinsky made a gun of his thumb and finger and put it to Ronan’s temple.
“Bang,” he said softly, withdrawing the fake gun. “See you on the streets.”'

'And there was his father, sitting in the charcoal BMW he had dreamt all these years ago. He was an image of Ronan and also of Declan and also of Matthew. A handsome devil with one eye the color of a promise and the other the color of a secret.
When he saw Ronan, he rolled down the window.
"Ronan," he said.
It sounded like he meant to say finally.
"Dad," Ronan said.
He was going to say I missed you. But he had been missing Niall Lynch for as long as he knew him.'

'Because Niall Lynch was a forest fire, a rising sea, a car crash, a closing curtain, a blistering symphony, a catalyst with planets inside him.
And he had given all of that to his middle son.'

'"You don’t have to do this," Ronan said.
"There isn’t anything else, man."
"There’s reality."
Kavinsky laughed the word. "Reality! Reality’s what other people dream for you."
"Reality’s where other people are," Ronan replied. He stretched out his arms. "What’s here, K? Nothing! No one!"
"Just us."
There was a heavy understanding in that statement, amplified by the dream. I know what you are, Kavinsky had said.
"That’s not enough," Ronan replied.
"Don’t say Dick Gansey, man. Do not say it. He is never going to be with you. And don’t tell me you don’t swing that way, man. I’m in your head."
"That’s not what Gansey is to me," Ronan said.
"You didn’t say you don’t swing that way."
Ronan was silent. Thunder growled under his feet. "No, I didn’t."
"That just makes it worse, man. You really are his lapdog."
There wasn't even a tiny piece of Ronan that was stung by this statement. When Ronan thought of Gansey, he thought of moving into Monmouth Manufacturing, of nights spent in companionable insomnia, of a summer searching for a king, of Gansey asking the Gray Man for his life. Brothers.'



Blue Lily, Lily Blue

'As always, Adam was reminded of how Ronan belonged in this place. Something about the familiar way he stood as he searched for ripe fruit implied that he had done it many times before. It made it easy to understand that Ronan had grown up here and would grow old here. Easy to see how to exile him was to excise his soul.'

Comments

TIMELINE + OTHER STUFF

[greywaren]

TRB Ch. 2
[Gansey] 'The tiny back of the car was a cluttered marriage of every day things [...] and the supplies he'd acquired during his eighteen months in Henrietta.'

'But the fact was this: Gansey had spent the last four years working with the thinnest scraps of evidence [...] His eighteen months in Henrietta had used some of the sketchiest scraps of all...'

'It could have been any one of the mornings in the last year and a half. Ronan and Adam would make up by the end of the day, his teachers would forgive him for missing class, then he and Adam and Ronan and Noah would go out for pizza, four against Declan.'

Ch 4
[Adam] 'Adam Parrish had been Gansey's friend for eighteen months, and he knew that certain things came along with that friendship.'

'Sometimes, Adam wondered if Ronan had been like Ronan before the Lynch brothers' father had died, but only Gansey had known him then.'

TDT
[Ronan] 'The two of them had lived together at Monmouth for nearly as long as Gansey had been in Henrietta — almost two years.[...] The fall after Ronan and Gansey had become friends, the summer before Adam, they'd spent half their free time hunting for Glendower and the other half hauling junk out of the second floor. [...] They worked on Glendower and Monmouth Manufacturing for months. [...] The third week of June, someone killed Niall Lynch. The fourth week, Ronan moved in.'

tl;dr the book timeline has several large issues in it
To make things simpler I'm assuming the year that the books start is 2013.

-When Adam became part of the group (in his first chapter he says he's known Gansey for 18 months, which is impossible given that Gansey has only been in Henrietta for 18 months and has met Ronan, become friends with him, cleared out Monmouth and been there when Niall died all before he met Adam).

-When Niall Lynch died (stated to be the third week of June in the Summer before they met Adam, 'almost two years' before Summer of 2013, meaning 2011. Considering that Gansey only showed up in October 2011 [if 'eighteen months' is correct] and knew Ronan before Niall's death, as well as the fact that we're supposed to believe that Ronan's father died a whopping year and a half before TRB starts and Ronan is still this bad off... it doesn't make much sense)

-[expanded] IF Niall did die in 2011 and they met Adam the Fall after his death, then Adam's 'eighteen month' friendship and Niall's 'two years prior' death becomes true. This would also mean that Ronan would have known Gansey for two and a half years instead of one and a half. Nothing is necessarily wrong with this version of the timeline, but it assumes that Gansey has been in Henrietta for 24-30 months instead of 18, prior to the beginning of canon. It also puts a lot of unnecessary time between significant events and the beginning of canon, making events like Niall's death, Adam's befriending of Gansey, and Gansey's trips around the world seem oddly more distant than they're presented during the present day.

-iirc Blue has two separate birthdays (one in the beginning of the school year and one before the series begins, the one before the school year has been word of god canonized)

Revised timeline
Something that I threw together, using Gansey arriving in Henrietta in October 2011 (18 months before April 2013, the beginning of TRB) as a reference:

➤ Gansey arrives in October 2011 and transfers into Aglionby Academy.
➤ He meets Ronan, presumably at some point in the following Spring (2012). The two of them become fast friends, and Gansey visits the Barns often enough to know his way around it. He gets to know Ronan's family and the two of them search for Glendower together.
➤ May-June 2012, Gansey purchases Monmouth and he and Ronan spend the months clearing it out. In the third week of June, Niall is murdered, Ronan finds the body, and he's kicked out of his home. He moves into Monmouth before July.
➤ The remainder of the Summer 2012 is likely spent with Ronan being inconsolable and shifting from pre-Niall Ronan Lynch to post-Niall Ronan Lynch that we all know and love throughout the series.
➤ August/September 2012, Gansey meets and befriends Adam. Ronan and Adam do not get along at first, as Ronan is jealous and possessive of Gansey and Adam isn't willing to put up with his shit.
➤ October 2012, Ronan gets his tattoo and Ronan's suicide attempt happens. Adam gets beaten by his father for trying to sneak out to find Ronan while Ronan is missing during this. Gansey makes Ronan promise him to graduate from Aglionby and presumably to keep trying to live. Ronan has to see a counselor from there on.
➤ December 2012, the Christmas Special happens. Ronan's scarring from his suicide attempt is mentioned.
➤ Between October 2012 and April 2013, Ronan and Adam grow closer together in friendship and the friction in the group lessened, allowing them to become Gansey&Ronan&Adam.
➤ April 2013, The Raven Boys begins!